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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281658">you tell me we can start the rain</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster'>lucymonster</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ben Solo Lives, Consent Issues, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:26:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,867</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281658</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On the list of things that have recently gone wrong in Rose’s life, finding herself in custody of a mysteriously not-dead war criminal barely breaks the top five. That says something.</p><p>(Or: Kylo Ren helps bring Rose back to herself after a Sith artifact corrupts her to the dark side. It's not what anyone expected, but they work with what they've got.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Rose Tico</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Little Black Dress Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>you tell me we can start the rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozensea/gifts">frozensea</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The morning after Rose arrives on Tatooine, Kylo Ren brings her breakfast in bed.</p><p>‘You should eat,’ he says, as she stares at the tray from her supine position and tries to muster up the energy for thought. Probably something indignant’s in order, like <em> why is he alive when everyone says he died on Exegol? </em> Or something fearful, like <em> is he planning to murder me and send my body back to my friends in pieces? </em>But fear and indignation take effort. Rose looks at the centrepiece of her breakfast, a hunk of what looks like it should be bread but for the fuzzy black spots scattered through its flesh.</p><p>He deposits the tray and turns to leave. ‘This food's mouldy,’ Rose calls after him.</p><p>Kylo Ren pauses in the doorway, hand hooked on his belt beside the weapon clip. Empty, she notices without caring one way or the other. ‘It’s meant to look like that. Samarian breadfruit. The black lumps are seeds. If you don’t want to eat them, spit them out on your plate and I’ll see if anything’s good to replant.’</p><p>‘Gross.’</p><p>‘Just eat,’ he says. ‘You look like you need it.’</p><p>She does need it. Hasn’t eaten in a couple of days. Hasn’t eaten <em> well </em>in at least a few weeks. On the list of things that have recently gone wrong in Rose’s life, finding herself in custody of a mysteriously not-dead war criminal barely breaks the top five. That says something.</p><p>The breadfruit has a gritty texture, but it softens to something more palatable when she dips it in the soup. Strips of dried meat float half-rehydrated in vegetable broth. It reminds her of the worker’s fare they used to eat back home before the war.</p><p>‘I <em> wish </em>I had enough ambient moisture to grow mould,’ Kylo Ren mutters on his way out.</p><p>When she's done eating, Rose goes back to sleep. It hurts less than staying awake.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It started … she hardly knows how it started. It was so gradual. Beaumont Kin brought in an artifact to study, an obsidian knife etched with runes along its jagged edge. Couldn’t have been more obviously Sith if it donned a billowy black cape and promised her unlimited power. But it didn’t do that. It sat on his workbench looking sinister but more or less inert, like every other dark artifact they’ve handled in the course of their work, and no one had any reason to suspect this time would be different.</p><p>Rose sat with Beau sometimes while he translated the runes, partly out of interest but mostly because she felt bad about the way everyone else would swerve in the hallways when they saw him coming. No one else wanted to risk an impromptu lesson on the atypical usage of ablative verbs in the knife’s arcane dialect. In a world full of cockpit jockeys and lightsaber heroes, nerds like her and Beau should stick together. Rose believed that at the start and she believes it now when she concentrates.</p><p>But somewhere along the way, it got lost.</p><p>Rose got angry.</p><p>She started to think uneasy new thoughts about her status in the triumphant Resistance and how little anyone seemed to notice her contributions. Beau’s enthusiasm became annoying, then oppressive. He was always bothering her about diacritics and declensions, stupid grammar facts no one else was willing to listen to. Rose fought in the battle of Exegol, and there she was, back behind her metaphorical pipes while everyone else reaped glory. Rey and Finn and Poe were all too busy for her. She started to see what she’d never seen before, that they were avoiding <em> her </em>as much as they avoided Beau.</p><p>Her anger made sense. It felt good.</p><p>One thing led to another, and now … they say she’s sick. They say dark forces have corrupted her. They’ve dumped her on this backwater planet to <em>keep her safe </em>while they fly off on another hero mission to track down the dealer who sold Beau that knife, and now she’s learned that this is where they dump everyone they don’t want to deal with. They’ve thrown Rose into the same slop bucket as Kylo Ren, all because she finally saw how badly they’d been using her.</p><p>‘I’ll make this right,’ Rey promised before she left, clasping Rose’s hand and squeezing. ‘I promise, Rose, I’ll fix this. Just hang in there a little longer.’</p><p>Just hang in there a little longer.</p><p>Something’s wrong. She still <em> feels </em>like herself, still feels rational. But the anger is a black cloud and she can’t see past it, can’t think through it. She’s angry and exhausted and she hardly knows what to do with herself. She hopes they come back for her. She hopes Beau will pull through. She hopes, if she hurts anyone else, it’ll only be Kylo Ren. She can live with that. He deserves it.</p><p>Beau deserved it.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s the heat that wakes her: she’s nauseous, blankets clinging to her skin, mouth dry as she sucks in lungfuls of stuffy air. There’s a water canteen by her bed. She drinks, then lifts her shirt up and splashes the excess on her stomach. It’s lukewarm but the evaporative cooling helps a little.</p><p>The room’s eerily silent, empty of the usual background noise of idling computers and climate control. No breeze comes through the air vent. Rose tries the door, finds it open, and exits into a larger version of the room she just left. White on off-white, plaster walls and pourcrete floor leading to arched hallways on two of the other sides. It’s well lit but windowless and shabby. Its maintenance is the work of living hands rather than droids, she deduces from the mop streaks and unwiped dust along various shelves and crevices. Packing crates sit piled against the far wall. A small holoscreen has pride of place in front of a sagging single-seat armchair. A used mug on the floor by the chair is the only immediate sign of habitation.</p><p>With a whoosh that makes Rose jump, the climate control comes back on. Cool air rushes from the vents. A short while later, noise from outside turns into an opening door and the sound of approach. Kylo Ren, she knows with a sick surge in her gut. She reaches for a weapon and finds nothing but the empty mug. Maybe she can smash it over his head.</p><p>She has her chance when he emerges through the opposite door. He’s distracted, busy taking off a cowl, shedding sand as he shakes out his hair. But she doesn’t act. ‘My door was unlocked,’ she tells him instead. ‘So I came out.’</p><p>‘Okay.’ He trudges off down one of the hallways without looking at her. When he comes back, he’s ditched the cowl as well as his boots. In bare feet and a pilled black sweater, he looks about as unimposing as a man of his height and bodycount has ever looked.</p><p>‘It’s kind of careless, isn’t it?’ she prods. ‘Leaving a prisoner free to roam. I could have escaped. Or attacked you.’</p><p>‘I’ll risk it.’ For a moment she thinks she's made him laugh, but his mouth is a flat line when he faces her. ‘Please don’t escape. You’re not a prisoner, but we’re a long way out from the nearest settlement. I’d rather not have to explain to Rey that you ran off and died in the desert.’</p><p>‘What is this place?’</p><p>‘Tatooine.’</p><p>‘Can you be more specific?’</p><p>‘Jundland Wastes. Great Chott salt flat. We’re on what’s left of the Lars family moisture farm, if that means anything to you.’</p><p>It doesn’t. ‘And you say I’m not a prisoner.’</p><p>Kylo Ren studies her. ‘You’re a guest,’ he says at last. ‘A guest who is strongly encouraged to accept my hospitality.’</p><p>Hospitality. So this is the place Kylo Ren calls home. Did Rey smuggle him here when the fighting was over? Or did he come himself, slinking away from the consequences of his crimes to play house in a remote moisture farm? Rose isn’t going to ask why he’s alive, because he probably won’t answer and she’s not sure she wants to hear it if he does. ‘If I’m a guest,’ she says, ‘you should show me around.’</p><p>There’s sweat on his brow. He’s standing by the air vent, tilting backwards into it, hair rippling in the artificial breeze. Strangely nice hair. Wasted on a man like him. ‘I’ve just come in from fixing the aircon, and it’s hot as Tusken balls out there. I’ll give you a tour when the suns go down.’ A pause. ‘Are you hungry?’ He sounds stilted, like he’s plucked the question at random from a jumbled folder labelled <em> hospitality </em>in his head.</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>‘I’ll fix you something.’</p><p>‘I said no. Are you deaf as well as evil?’</p><p>He ignores her. Takes the empty mug from her hand and disappears through the last remaining arch that she assumes must lead to the kitchen. She hears banging cupboards and clattering pans as he starts to cook.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>True to his word, Kylo Ren takes her out to see the rest of the homestead that evening. Dusk has fallen over sands that stretch to the horizon, marking an impassable barrier between Rose and the world she knows – a prison wall, no matter what he says. For the last eight-odd hours she’s been cooped up inside the small, cramped wing of the house that Kylo Ren keeps lit and air conditioned. The place smells of the homemade stew he served despite her protests. Annoyingly, he’s a decent cook. Her stomach is full. Her legs jitter from too many hours of stillness.</p><p>‘Scavengers stripped the generator for parts long before I got here,’ he says, showing her a pit in the main courtyard that would once have housed main power. ‘I have enough solar panels to run the farm while the suns are up and store the daily excess. Then at night, when it cools down–’ He points. A few dozen paces from the dome, towers sprout like spindly cacti from the burnt brown earth. ‘I keep those running on battery around the clock. Vaporators. Each spire pulls one point five litres from the air per cycle.’</p><p>Rose counts the spires. Does some maths. ‘That’s not a lot to live on.’</p><p>‘It’s enough for me by myself. With you here…’ He shrugs. ‘We’ll get by.’</p><p>The way he says it rankles. Rose doesn’t want favours. Not from <em> him. </em> ‘Why take me in, then?’</p><p>‘Rey asked me to look after you. She’s worried. Here, I’ll show you my hydroponic garden.’</p><p>In a UV-lit underground chamber, water pipes snake back and forth in neatly stacked rows around a central water barrel. There are greens and marrows and one strip of what look like pumpkins with wicked thorns. Dark vines sag with a crop of some shrivelled black legume. ‘If Rey told you what’s going on,’ she says as he adjusts a trellis, ‘then you should know I’m a danger to everyone. Including you.’</p><p>‘I’ll risk it,’ he says. It’s exactly what he said inside. The anger swirls, sending cloudy tendrils up Rose’s gullet.</p><p>‘I can use the Force,’ she says.</p><p>‘Well done. Me too.’</p><p>‘Not like <em> that. </em> Not like you. But when I’m angry…’ She doesn’t know why she’s telling him. It’s none of his business. It’s thanks to Rey’s betrayal that he’s involved at all. ‘When people make me angry, I can hurt them now. So I’m just saying. Maybe you shouldn’t make me angry.’</p><p>Kylo Ren gives her a look. ‘Aren’t you the girl Phasma caught on the <em> Supremacy </em> that time? Miss Peace and Light and Justice? I see what Rey meant. The dark side’s really done a number on you.’</p><p>‘You’re one to talk.’</p><p>‘Yeah.’ His voice is infuriatingly calm. ‘I am. Listen, Rose, I know you have no reason to trust me. But trust your friends. They left you here so you’ll be safe while they find a way to extract whatever poison that Sith knife put in your head. Feel free to try and hurt me if it makes you feel better. You’re nowhere near strong enough to do me any harm.’ He turns his back and resumes adjusting the trellis.</p><p>He’s underestimating her. Thinks she’s weak and useless. Just like everybody else.</p><p>The anger boils over and it feels so, so good to let it flow free.</p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ she says a while later, staring up at the ceiling as an invisible force pins her body to the ground. Kylo Ren has managed to save all but one of the hydroponic pipes she broke. Spilt water seeps through her clothes, fragrant with juice from the ruined breadfruit. She doesn’t know if she’s sorry or not, but it seems like the thing to say. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’</p><p>‘I’ll let you up,’ says Kylo Ren calmly, ‘and then we’re going to head inside. You can finish exploring the farm tomorrow.’</p><p>There’s not a scratch on him. He wasn’t lying – he’s too strong for her to hurt. She really, really tried. ‘This isn’t me,’ she tells him, and thinks maybe <em> she’s </em>the one lying. It feels like her. She feels so right, so grounded in herself. ‘I’m not the one doing this. I don’t even know what I’m angry about.’</p><p>‘I know,’ says Kylo Ren. ‘Come on. Into the house.’</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She can’t hurt him. It’s like a weight she didn’t know was there has fallen off her shoulders. Weightless, Rose dreams of rejoining her friends. <em> Look, </em> she’ll tell them, <em> I’m fixed. I’m no threat to you. </em></p><p><em> No threat to him, maybe, </em> she answers herself. <em> I can still make the rest of them pay. I can still show them how badly they underestimated me. </em></p><p>She dreams of being pinned to the garden floor looking up at Kylo Ren’s looming face, prickling with strange heat between her legs – adrenaline. Hindbrain nonsense.</p><p>She dreams of Beau clawing at his throat while she squeezes the breath out of him, her veins throbbing with a power as exhilarating as it is brand new.</p><p>She dreams of throwing back her head and screaming <em> I’m still me </em>to anyone who’ll listen.</p><p>But who’s listening out here in the barren wastes of Tatooine?</p><p>She wakes crying, and she can’t explain why.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>‘So this is your punishment,’ she says. Curls her top lip to infuse the words with scorn. She's been planning the jab for a while now, stewing on her anger and contempt.</p><p>He's lounging in the armchair, watching a holomovie on his crackly screen. ‘This is my living room,’ he corrects, in a voice that would make her want to punch him even if she weren’t under the thrall of a Sith curse. </p><p>‘Scraping a living out here in the desert. Subsistence farming. It’s a long way to fall from the peak of the First Order’s military.’</p><p>She hasn’t seen him much today. She’s fatigued in a way she has no good explanation for, and while she’s been napping on and off, he’s been out in his sandfields doing whatever it is he does now he’s retired from mass murder. Changing oil. Tuning equipment. Replanting the breadfruit she destroyed in her last outburst.</p><p>‘Rey helped you survive, didn’t she? She hid you out here, away from real justice. Let everyone believe you were dead. She's a traitor.’</p><p>‘I’m just trying to watch my movie.’</p><p>Rose pulls up a crate beside his armchair. It’s not even a good movie. She went through his whole storage drive earlier, during one of her waking spells, but all he has are lame action films and a couple of grainy tutorials on how to assemble a humidity sensor. It’s surreal that this is Kylo Ren. The Supreme Leader of the First Order. A quiet guy with floppy hair and trash taste in movies. Then again, it’s surreal that she’s out here because she manifested Force powers and tried to Vader-choke one of her best friends to death. Life has its twists and turns. </p><p>‘How long are you planning to keep me here?’ she asks, over the belligerent <em> pew pew </em>of a Mandalorian shooting up a cantina full of gangsters.</p><p>‘It’s not up to me. Rey will come back for you once she’s done what she needs to do.’</p><p>‘And you have no way of contacting her to ask.’</p><p>‘Correct.’</p><p>The anger cloud eddies again. ‘That was meant to be sarcasm.’</p><p>‘Look, I don’t get long-range signal out here. I barely get local radio. It’s only been a couple of days, and I won’t risk taking you into town while you’re unstable.’</p><p>A real-world <em> crack </em>joins the clamour of fictional blasters. Rose’s hand stings, and looking down, she’s surprised but strangely unfazed to see the wood of the crate has splintered under her fist. ‘I am not unstable.’</p><p>‘My mistake. Will you please shut up now? Mando’s about to bust the spice trader who killed his brother.’</p><p>The blaster fire hits a wild crescendo, and Rose accepts that she’s not going to get any sense out of Kylo Ren until his movie ends. She doesn’t want to go back to bed, and she certainly doesn’t want to watch it with him, so she wanders off and quietly seethes when he lets her walk right out the front door unchecked. She’s too unstable to be taken in range of a comm tower, but stable enough that he trusts her not to run off alone? She has more than half a mind to prove him wrong. See how he likes that when he deigns to emerge from his gunslinger trance.</p><p>The garage is under a separate dome. The wind stings her eyes as she crosses the flat leading down to the entry ramp. It’s hotter than a boiler room out here but dry as a bone, with an ever-present cloud of fine grit in the air that makes breath taste sharp. She follows the swept path and jimmies open the sand-crusted garage door – unlocked, which seems a bold choice in a region plagued by Jawas and Tusken Raiders – to find a battered old speeder propped against one wall of a workshop that’s seen better days.</p><p>Despite her plans of spite-fueled escape, the speeder doesn’t hold her attention for long. Her eye is drawn to a pile of vaporators like the ones on the surface, all perfectly functional-looking and yet left down here to rot. Rose can hardly believe it. All those glum comments about water scarcity, and Kylo Ren is sitting on a store of unused equipment that could easily double his daily yield.</p><p>She tramps back to the house, kicking up sand. ‘Ren,’ she says loudly, over a swell of dramatic music as Mando’s arch-nemesis sinks to his knees spurting blood. ‘Ren!’ No answer. Are they on first name terms? ‘Kylo, you have a garage full of unused vaporators. Why do you have a garage full of unused vaporators?’</p><p>Kylo Ren closes his eyes as if in prayer. Opens them, breathes out, and turns to face her. ‘Firstly, I prefer Ben.’</p><p>‘Don’t care. Vaporators.’</p><p>‘Secondly, those things are ancient. Half the power converters blew when I tried to hook them up. I don’t have spares, and I don’t have any credits to buy them. Everything I’ve got is in the vaporators that are already running.’</p><p>As a long time Resistance member, Rose has made a career out of working around shortages. A lack of spare power converters sounds like less an issue of resources than of imagination. Something strange wells in her: it’s annoyance, but different than the kind she’s been feeling so much lately. It’s cleaner. Less cloudy. Actionable. ‘I get that you’re used to having lackeys take care of these things for you, but converters are everywhere. There have to be other places you can take them from. The auto-doors. The outdoor lights. Hell, unplug that stupid holoscreen and use the parts.’</p><p>‘That <em> stupid screen </em>runs on low voltage. The vaporators are hungry. They need way more power than a household appliance can feed them.’</p><p>‘So wire them in parallel. If you can find enough converters to get even one or two more vaporators powered up, it’ll change your life. You’ll have a water surplus instead of stressing that a single houseguest could tip you into the red.’</p><p>Kylo Ren – Ben – mutes the movie. He no longer looks disinterested. For the first time since she got here, he’s taking her seriously. His gaze makes her warm, and she can’t explain why she cares if he pays her attention or not. ‘I’ve thought about that,’ he says, though she’s not convinced he actually has. Maybe in the last five seconds. ‘But won’t the converters run out of phase with each other? They could blow the circuitry on the entire machine, and <em> that’s </em>not something I can fix with spare household parts.’</p><p>‘Well, you’d run their output through a capacitor. Or a bank of capacitors – that’d do the same job.’</p><p>He sighs again. Not at her this time. ‘So all I need to do is strip the whole farm for enough spare capacitors to process the output of enough repurposed power converters to gain an extra three litres of water a day, best case scenario. Sounds fun.’</p><p>‘More fun than your garbage movie collection.’</p><p>He gives her a look. ‘Why do you care about my water supply, anyway? It’s not like you’re going to be here for long.’</p><p>Good question. Why does Rose think, feel or do anything these days? She used to believe she knew. 'I'm an engineer.' That's a solid place to start. She's always been an engineer. 'Seeing people blunder through life with bad tech is physically painful for me. Besides, you're an asshole, and I don't like being indebted to assholes. Consider this my payment for food and board.'</p><p>She knows she's won when he turns off the holoscreen, with one last wistful look at the death scene on freeze-frame. 'My tech isn't that bad,' he says, sounding wounded. 'I've done my best. This farm was nothing when I started.'</p><p>'And by the time I'm done it'll be better than nothing. Come on. This time tomorrow, we'll both be taking full length showers.'</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It's late evening when they start, and there's not actually much they can get done before the suns go down. As the light fades over the sandy horizon, heat dissipates into the cloud-free atmosphere leaving air as cold and dry as a scalpel cut. The garage dome is unheated, barely insulated, and the short dash back to the homestead leaves Rose red-cheeked and shivering. The fatigue creeps up again. Bleary-eyed and angry at nothing, she takes to her bed like a fever patient.</p><p>Kylo Ren – Ben – brings her a bowl of thick soup topped with breadfruit croutons. His fingers brush hers when he hands it over. Her stomach squirms. Another symptom she can't put a name to.</p><p>He hesitates before leaving the room, eyes lingering on her spoon poised over the soup bowl. Making sure she eats? What a strange, wasted life this man leads. He’d have made a good bed and breakfast host if he hadn’t chosen the galactic domination route. She wonders how much time he’s spent learning how to stretch his droughtproof crops into proper meals.</p><p>‘Does it go away?’ she asks him. If she keeps her eyes trained on the croutons floating in her soup, she can pretend she’s not really speaking. The words are coming from someone else. ‘The anger. The darkness. Once it gets inside you, does it ever go away?’</p><p>‘I have no idea.’ Ben’s voice is soft, and the patronising gentleness threatens to bring her rage flooding to the surface again. ‘Our cases aren’t comparable. You’re not dark, not really. You’re under a spell. None of this is coming from you.’</p><p>‘It feels like it’s coming from me.’</p><p>‘That’s why it’s such a dangerous spell. Just hang in there, Rose. We’ll get you out.’</p><p>Just hang in there. That’s what Rey said, too. Why are they all treating her like this? Hang onto what?</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>‘You said it wouldn’t make a difference,’ Ben accuses, shortly after lunchtime the next day. They’ve spent most of the morning arguing over which devices he can do without, prying squat metal cylinders from inside his media system (<em>just read a book instead</em>), convection cooktop (<em>you can use the oil stove, right?</em>) and radio receiver (<em>you’re out of range anyway</em>). They’ve compromised on perimeter defences: he absolutely can’t do without his motion sensor network or basic anti-Jawa charge wires, but the more power-hungry and aggressive measures can go (<em>it’ll be fun – scare the raiders off yourself, relive your wartime glory days</em>). </p><p>His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, and there’s grease smeared on his forehead where he keeps raking his hair back. Rose could wipe it away for him, reach out and clean it off his skin with a thumb. She doesn’t.</p><p>They’ve found all the converters they need. Now they’re stuck on the unexpectedly thorny issue of capacitors.</p><p>‘I said you could group smaller capacitors into a bank,’ Rose concedes. Dozens of individual capacitors are piled in front of her, the piecemeal yield from Ben’s ransacking of the homestead, garage and hydroponic bay. ‘I was picturing maybe half a dozen big ones to a bank, max. You realise what a maintenance nightmare this is? If any single one of all these tiny components breaks, the whole bank will go down and you’ll have no idea which capacitor caused the failure.’</p><p>‘This is the hardware I’ve got. We’ll just have to make it work. If I spend a little extra time on upkeep, so be it. I’m not dismantling anything else.’</p><p>In fairness, they’ve pretty much hit the limit of things they can reasonably strip for parts. All Ben’s worldly possessions come from the one storage cellar that was too well protected for scavengers to crack during the farm’s decades of disuse. He has no credits. No crop surplus to trade. No time to go into town for work once he’s finished his subsistence chores. She can’t fault him for wanting to keep his climate control and speeder intact. Especially since, with no signal and no non-Tusken neighbours in walking distance, the speeder is his only point of contact with the outside world.</p><p>A thought comes to Rose. She can’t clearly see it through the ever-present smog of rage, but she hears the thunks as it lands in her brain. Is this what Force sense feels like? Is there an upside to her Sith affliction? ‘Ben,’ she says, ‘you never showed me the power supply you built to replace that old pit in the courtyard.’</p><p>Ben blinks at her. ‘We’re not taking capacitors out of the power supply. That would black out the whole farm.’</p><p>‘That’s not what I mean. Just show me.’</p><p>With a look of indulgence worn thin, he leads her around the back of the homestead where she’s never bothered to explore thanks to the unappealing whiff of nearby septic. There, shielded from the brutal northerlies, a roughly assembled power array feeds the farm from a solar bank of the most distinctive shape Rose has ever seen.</p><p>‘Those solar panels,’ she says. ‘They’re from TIE wings.’</p><p>‘Yeah. Most standard TIE designs power their weapons from solar to take pressure off the main engines. It took a few trial designs, but I haven’t had a single power outage since I settled on this configuration.’ He grins. It’s surprising what it does to his face, softening the angles and exposing cheerful dimples on his cheeks. ‘Not bad, right?’</p><p>‘Not bad at all,’ she says, voice sharpened to a point. She’s not just annoyed that his smile is so unreasonably nice. She’s also annoyed that he’s been jerking her around all day. ‘Shame the rest of the ship seems to have magically disappeared. A single capacitor from those laser cannons would solve every problem we have.’</p><p>The smile slides off Ben’s face and drips away into his makeshift sewage system. ‘I’m not taking apart my ship.’</p><p>‘Why not? You’re not using it. It doesn’t even have wings.’</p><p>‘You heard me,’ says Ben. He turns and walks away.</p><p>Rose follows, taking two steps for each one of his. ‘Oh, get a grip. I know what you pilots are like about your ships, but you’re surviving by the skin of your teeth out here. I’m trying to help. That TIE has enough parts to upgrade all the infrastructure on this farm, so you could build a <em> life </em>for yourself instead of wasting every day patching broken systems and praying your water supply holds.’</p><p>‘The wings clip back on. As soon as I start dismantling the rest, my whole ship’s grounded.’</p><p>‘So what? What do you need with a military-grade fightercraft?’</p><p>‘You…’ Ben stops. Rounds on her. Jabs a finger in her face. All this time she’s been thinking of him as Kylo Ren, but now for the first time he really <em> looks </em>it, swelling with irrational anger at the threat to his beloved war toy. ‘You mind your own damn business. You came here for my help. I never asked for yours.’</p><p>Something inside Rose is awakening. The anger swirls and thickens, filling her with energy that feels right and clean and irresistibly good. Who’s he to yell at her? Who’s he to accuse her of <em> asking </em>for his help, when it was Rey who dumped her here in the first place? He doesn’t want to accept her kindness – fine. She’ll give him the other thing. Test her powers against his. See what good his stupid ship does him when he’s gasping for air through his constricted windpipe, on his knees at her feet like a –</p><p>Sirens blare.</p><p>Ben curses, and turns away from her. ‘Tusken Raiders. They’ve tripped the perimeter alarm. Get inside.’</p><p>Tusken Raiders? Even better. Rose’s blood roars in her ears, blocking out thought. She’ll show them. She’ll show them all. She breaks into a sprint, heading for what feels on a gut level like the source of the intrusion. Loose sand sinks beneath her feet, slowing her, holding her back from the kills that are rightfully hers. She’ll show the sand, too. She’ll show the whole planet, the whole galaxy. She’s done being underestimated.</p><p>‘Rose,’ Ben calls after her, but the syllable means nothing. </p><p>Just hang in there.</p><p>She’ll show them.</p><p>She’ll –</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She’ll crash. Weak, disoriented, heavy as dead weight and yet strangely weightless. He carries her back to the house. The Tuskens are gone. He drove them off with one hand while restraining her with the other. The Force that comes from him is nothing like the one she wields: it’s controlled, it’s nuanced, it’s irresistible in its strength of will. It’s a lifetime of specialist training and she’s a toddler learning to walk.</p><p>Throwing tantrums for reasons she can’t articulate.</p><p>His arms are a solid shield around her.</p><p>‘You’ll be okay,’ Ben tells her like he knows the first damn thing about what’s going on inside her head. Like anyone can know, when she doesn’t know herself. ‘Just rest for a while. It’ll be over soon.’</p><p>‘This isn’t–’</p><p>‘It isn’t you. I know, Rose. I know.’</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She’ll wake. Hungry. Stomach growling a war chant.</p><p>He quiets the beat with egg toast, or his best approximation of it given the resources: finger-thick slices of breadfruit soaked in some kind of batter and fried to a crisp. He serves it with sweet syrup and rashers of the tough, gamey dried meat he keeps on hand for protein.</p><p>‘You’re surprisingly good at this,’ she tells him around a strange but not unappetising mouthful.</p><p>‘At cooking? It’s not hard.’</p><p>‘You’re less good at taking a compliment.’</p><p>‘That wasn’t a real compliment. The <em> surprisingly </em>made it backhanded.’</p><p>‘I just didn’t expect someone like you to be so domestic.’</p><p>He leaves her with the syrup jug and fries a couple more pieces for himself. They’re silent as they eat, except for the sounds of chewing and the occasional cutlery clatter. Rose’s anger disappears temporarily, but it’s still there, fermenting in her gut.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She’ll enter his room that night, driven by nothing more coherent than the itch beneath her skin and the faint, amorphous need to do something.</p><p>He’s sitting cross-legged on top of his mattress, lights dimmed but still on, dressed in a loose linen robe that falls open over his well-formed chest. His eyes are closed in meditation. They snap open when she reaches the foot of his bed.</p><p>‘Rose? Is everything okay?’</p><p>Has it ever been? She can’t remember. The darkness has been inside her for what feels like forever. Maybe since before she was born. </p><p>She kisses him. It’s a jarring mess of teeth and rigid posture and his efforts to stop her. Heart pounding, she lets the anger rise and uses its strength to resist the push of his hands on her sternum. He’s not trying hard enough – underestimating her, even now. She plunges her tongue past his lips and swallows the startled noise he makes.</p><p>His next push is stronger. He pries her away, gripping her shoulders. ‘Okay,’ he says, voice strained with surprise. ‘This is an interesting new symptom.’</p><p>‘It’s not a symptom,’ Rose snarls. Is she lying? Who knows. From where she is, it seems like a perfectly reasonable next step. ‘You didn’t let me kill the raiders. I need <em> some </em>kind of outlet.’</p><p>‘You have hands.’ Ben’s anger is responding, she can feel it in the Force – a harmony to a beautiful dark song, melding with hers. Looking down, she sees a bulge in his thin robe that wasn’t there before, and feels a rush of aching heat. He smells nice, up this close. Like salt skin and hard work. ‘If I’d let you kill the raiders, you’d have regretted it tomorrow. Same goes here. Go back to your own bed, do what you have to do, and hang in until the episode passes. This isn’t you. Try to remember that.’</p><p>Rose doesn’t want to remember anything. She kisses him again, uses all her strength this time, pushes him back onto the mattress and straddles his lap. He’s hard for her. Says he doesn’t want her but his body betrays the lie. They’re always lying to her, all of them, and she’s had enough. The Force burns like wildfire through her veins. Ben struggles beneath her, and she grips his hair and kisses hard. He <em> will </em> yield. He <em> will </em>give her what she wants. She’s wet and ready beneath her strangling clothes, aching to engulf him. Ben groans.</p><p>Flips her over. Pins her to his bed.</p><p>His pupils are dilated, hair mussed, cheeks red. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ he says, voice husky with arousal and regret – for what? Finally, he’s giving her what she wants. What she deserves after all the wrongs she’s endured from everyone around her.</p><p>She tilts her hips up into him, chasing the bulge of his erection, and he lifts a hand –</p><p>Waves it in front of her face – </p><p>Darkness. Nothing. Like a light switch flipped, she’s gone.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The house is silent when she wakes. She’s back in her own bed, fully clothed, draped in blankets with a canteen of water in arm’s reach.</p><p>She gulps it down, then feels her stomach spasm like it wants to expel her soul from her body. She can’t make it to the ‘fresher. Throws up in the bucket Ben supplies as a laundry hamper. She’s crying, messy, her face soaked with tears and snot and saliva. Her shoulders heave. She cries it out.</p><p>Then, when the shakes subside, she cleans up. Rinses the hamper. Splashes her face. More wasted water. More avoidable, selfish drain on her host’s hospitality. It’s dark still and she tiptoes through the house not to wake him, but she knows in her gut that he’s not inside. His bedroom door’s wide open, and who’d sleep without a lock after a scene like that?</p><p>Rose sits for a while in his saggy old armchair, staring at what’s left of the holoscreen she forced him to dismantle. It feels she’s purged not just water but anger. There’s no dark cloud left inside her. Just crisp, clear misery and shame.</p><p>Dawn’s breaking by the time she finds strength to move. The suns haven’t worked their scorching magic yet, and the sand is cold beneath her bare feet, the air brittle and cloudy where it meets the damp warmth of her breath. Instinct guides her past the garage dome to a place Ben’s never shown her before: a sunken pit behind the vaporator spires, with a partially covered space carved out that maybe used to be a maintenance workbay. Now, it houses the body of an old scout class TIE. </p><p>The thing is marble-round, angular struts protruding from each side, its skeleton wings stripped of their distinctive solar panels. Ben’s working on one of the blaster cannons. He has the shell open and a spool of cabling draped around his arm.</p><p>‘You were right,’ he says, before she can make a sound to announce her presence. ‘I’ve been clinging to the past at the expense of the present. I’m never going to fly combat again. There’s no point leaving these parts to rust.’</p><p>He’s taking it apart. Prying a large capacitor from inside the weapon, large enough to meet their need a hundred times over.</p><p>His voice has a strange echo in the desolate workbay. He hasn’t turned to look at her. ‘It’s stupid,’ he says, ‘but I’ve been dreaming of taking this ship back up one day. Flying off on more exciting adventures. I mean – you’ve seen my place, you know there’s not much to stay for. I know it’s wrong. I came into exile here for a reason. I just wasn’t ready to let the dream go.’</p><p>The capacitor comes free and falls to the ground with a loud metallic thud.</p><p>‘Ben,’ says Rose, voice sour in her mouth. ‘What I did last night. I am so, so sorry for–’</p><p>‘Don’t be.’ Finally he turns. There are those dimples he wears when he smiles, his creases deepened by smears of engine grease. It’s a lukewarm smile – not fake, exactly, but clearly more for her sake than his own. ‘If anything, I should thank you. That’s the warmest my bed’s been since I got here. Tuskens aren’t really my type.’</p><p>He says it with so much bravado. In all the time Rose has spent griping about his Tatooine home, she’s hardly spared a thought for what it must be like to live this kind of life day to day. The water supply issue is frightening but fixable. The loneliness is more permanent.</p><p>‘I attacked you,’ she says.</p><p>‘I said it’s fine. I kind of liked it.’ His smile turns wry. ‘But you were out of your mind, anyway, so it doesn’t count. We can pretend nothing happened.’</p><p>He goes back to his work on the wing strut. Rose doesn’t buy it. With no cathartic apology to offload her guilt, the pressure inside is almost unbearable, and the anger cloud is back like it never left. How can he not understand? Is that the same limp excuse he uses for his own crimes? ‘I attacked you,’ she repeats. ‘On purpose. I knew exactly what I was doing – it felt <em> good </em>– and I wanted that more than I cared about you or anyone else. I’m the one who’s been hanging onto the past. To the person I used to be. That artifact gave me the power to use the Force, but I’m the one deciding how to use it. I’m–’</p><p>‘You’re ridiculous, is what you are.’</p><p>Rose stops talking, gapes at Ben. His face has hardened, kind smile melting away, and in the chill of his contempt he looks like a different person – no. He’s the same person as always, but with a shadow he’s been choosing not to show till now.</p><p>‘You’ve got some nerve talking down to me about the dark side,’ he says. ‘You choked one guy, kissed another, and now you think you’re the empress of evil? Give me a break. You have the spiritual equivalent of a head cold. You’ve done nothing worse than blueball me and give Beaumont Kin a story to tell his cantina buddies. Get over it and go back to messing with vaporators. Unlike the guilt complex, your engineering skills are actually worth something.’</p><p>Rose digests this outburst in a series of slow blinks. Inappropriately, she wants to laugh; his anger has blasted hers away, leaving clear skies and an acute sense of just how bizarre the situation is. ‘Whew,’ she says at last. ‘Guess the dark side is a sensitive topic around here.’</p><p>‘You think?’</p><p>‘But you really didn’t mind last night. You’re not just saying that to make me feel better.’</p><p>‘Some men like it when attractive women jump their bones. I don’t know what else to tell you.’</p><p>The mood breaks. Ben’s grin returns, cautious and conditional but all the more welcome for it. Rose shakes her head and steps back onto safer footing with, ‘I wish I hadn’t just seen you drop that capacitor. With components in such short supply, you should show more respect to the few you have.’</p><p>‘It’ll be fine. Are you going to help me install it, or are you just here to criticise?’</p><p>Rose breathes normally again.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They work until the suns are high in the sky. One vaporator goes up without issue, its restored spire rising up to lick scant water from the air. A second will join it once they finish reassembly.</p><p>When the day’s so hot that the horizon shimmers and the sand burns Rose’s feet, they head inside and Ben takes to the kitchen to whip up a late breakfast. He clatters around out of view, searing meat and slicing breadfruit, while Rose thinks through everything that’s happened since she got here. Her memories feel disjointed, but he’s an unbroken thread stitching them together. His steady needlework reassures her. Against all likelihood and quite possibly all justice, the man who used to be Kylo Ren has found stability out here.</p><p>They eat together, but Rose isn’t really hungry.</p><p>‘I’m thinking of kissing you again,’ she informs him when he sets down his cutlery. ‘Would I be out of line?’</p><p>Ben looks at her with piercing eyes, and she knows he’s assessing her for signs of another episode. ‘You tell me. Are you feeling okay? Rate your murderous anger on a scale from one to ten.’</p><p>‘Two or three, maybe. But I promise this isn’t the – what did you call it? – <em> spiritual head cold </em>talking.’</p><p>Ben nods his acquiescence. He wants to look cool and calm, Rose thinks, but she doesn’t miss the flush rising to his cheeks.</p><p>He’s not much less clumsy a kisser when he’s willing than when he was trying to fight her off. But after a few false-start nose bumps, they find a rhythm that feels good. It’s a calmer kind of thrill than last night. A pleasant building warmth instead of an inferno. Ben makes a token effort to take the lead, but yields quickly when she threads her fingers through his hair and grips tight for control.</p><p>‘I’m just checking,’ he says when they break apart, in a voice that’s dropped about an octave. ‘You’re still unstable. I don’t want to do anything you’ll regret when you–’</p><p>She nips his lower lip to stop him. ‘I recall some accusations of blueballing earlier this morning. I’d hate to repeat the same misdeed twice.’</p><p>‘I was just being crass,’ says Ben, turning redder still. ‘Trying to shock you out of your funk. I didn’t actually mean – oh.’</p><p>She’s found the button that shuts him up. It’s a different kind of power than the Force-strength surging in her, but as she palms Ben’s tented crotch and feels his whole body shudder, Rose thinks she might prefer this kind.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They go to her bed this time – technically as much his property as the one he sleeps in, but it feels like being on her turf, and she needs all the extra grounding she can get. Touching him does strange things to the power inside her. Close enough to fall in sync, beating his heartbeat and breathing his breath, she glimpses what the Force can be when it’s not warped by rage. It’s a connection, breathtaking in its intensity. An energy between all living things, and oh, Rose is living.</p><p>She glimpses other things she likes, too, but not for long. Ben’s in a rush. Half-undressed, impatient, needy with an edge of desperation now he’s satisfied she wants it. What Rose <em> wants </em>is a lot more control and a lot less grabbing, but she’s happy and aroused enough that she doesn’t really mind the pawing. Let him get the urgency out of his system.</p><p>He doesn’t last long. He’s barely inside her when he comes, mouth a wide <em> o </em> of pleasure and surprise, and when he’s done she has to grab him by the hair to stop him hiding his sheepish face in the pillow. ‘My turn,’ she tells him. Rolls on top, straddles his lap and rubs his spent cock till he whimpers from overstimulation. She grinds on his clothed leg – never mind the extra laundry – and when she’s wound tight enough to blow, she sits on his face and has him take her the rest of the way with his mouth.</p><p>He’s lovely like this, with her wetness on his lips and his whole aura aglow with pleasure. Her thoughts are haze and she can hardly remember seeing him any other way.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She tries for a second round in the shower. Ben turns the faucet off – old habits die hard – but he also lasts slightly longer this time, and she’s not really mad.</p><p>No work gets done for the rest of the day. When the suns set they sleep in Rose’s bed, curled close. For the first time in ages her dreams are empty of rage and pain.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The Falcon kicks up clouds of dust from the flat. They’re still billowing in the air when Rose rushes out, roused from her Ben-shaped pillow by roaring thrusters that broke the traffic-free Tatooine skies like a whip crack.</p><p>A greeting party disembarks: Rey at the helm, Finn and Poe close behind her. Three heroes returning from yet another one of their grand adventures, to collect Rose who’s been left behind.</p><p>Last time Rose saw Rey, she has dim memories of trying to attack her, of swearing and snarling and thrashing in her grip. She remembers <em> just take her, please, I can’t deal with this </em> and <em> watch out, she’s going to choke you again </em> and <em> restrain her if you have to, she’ll understand once she’s back to herself. </em> But when she rushes forward, Rey doesn’t flinch. Pulls her into a tight hug instead and says, ‘How are you feeling?’</p><p>‘Hard to say.’ Tatooine is an opaque bubble. There’s a world outside that Rose used to live in, a world where she had a job and a life and saw multiple people every day, none of whom were Ben. It’s all coming back to her.</p><p>And if Rey’s here, that means…</p><p>‘We tracked the dagger to its source.’ Finn hugs her in turn; he smells clean and cool, with undertones of soap. He showers every single day. That’s another thing Rose remembers from outside the bubble. Despite the laxer standards here, she can’t remember Ben ever smelling bad – just like himself. </p><p>‘An old Sith temple,’ Poe chimes in over Finn’s shoulder. ‘Set up around some kind of … version? Verdant?’</p><p>‘Vergence,’ says Rey.</p><p>‘That’s what I said. Set up around some kind of vergence in the Force.’</p><p>‘I’ve found a ritual to free you from its influence, Rose. But you have to be inside the temple for it to work. Do you need time to pack your things?’</p><p>Breaking free of the hug pile, Rose looks back at the homestead. She didn’t realise Ben followed her out. He’s standing a short distance behind her, a dark shadow cast by the sun of Rose’s friendship circle, a quiet sentry with tousled hair and day-old stubble on his jaw. Rose remembers the rasp of it against her lips, between her legs. She wonders if there are bite marks on his chest beneath the hastily donned black sweater.</p><p>There’s still more work to do on the vaporators. With her gone, he’ll have to figure it out himself. Maybe he won’t bother. Like he told her at the start, he has enough water to support one person. It was her extra presence that put strain on his system and made the upgrade project urgent.</p><p>It seems she’s not the only one who didn’t notice him. ‘Ren,’ Poe says, and then when Finn’s elbow connects with his ribs: ‘I mean, Solo.’</p><p>Discomfort swirls, brushing the edges of Rose’s inner rage cloud. They came to Ben for a desperate favour, dumped her in his lap, and now no one wants to swallow their pride and say thank you? This is what happens once you’re tainted by the dark side: the heroes lose all respect for you. They’re ready to discard Ben just like they discarded Rose. It’s the two of them against the world and she’ll show them, she’ll make them sorry, she’ll – </p><p>‘Completely off her mono-ski, yeah,’ Ben’s telling Rey. How long has she been fuming? She’s lost the thread of the conversation. ‘Comes in and out. One minute she’s normal, next minute she’s crazy. Make sure she always has a chaperone unless you enjoy repair work. Sometimes she breaks things when you leave her unattended.’</p><p>‘Thank you,’ says Rey, with enough warmth to take the wind out of Rose’s resentful sails. ‘I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been here to take care of her.’</p><p>Ben nods.</p><p>‘Come on, Rose,’ says Finn, taking her elbow. ‘Time to go.’</p><p>She’s not ready to go. Hasn’t finished the vaporators. Hasn’t said goodbye.</p><p>‘He’s right!’ The words come out in an unplanned yelp. ‘I’m still crazy. I can’t be trusted. I think Ben should come with us to make sure I don’t hurt anyone this time.’</p><p>Four sets of eyes stare at her. Then at each other. There’s definitely some silent debate happening between Finn and Poe, and a stern warning glare coming at them from Rey. It’s Ben whose reaction surprises her most. She’s thinking of his dream about leaving Tatooine behind, of flying off in his now-dismantled TIE. But as he looks between her and the homestead, there’s an emotion on his face that she’s never seen him wear before – not when he was fighting off raiders, not when he was fighting off <em> her. </em> It’s fear. Deep-etched anxiety that purses his lips and pulls his dimpled cheeks tight.</p><p>‘If I leave the farm undefended,’ he says, ‘there’ll be nothing to come back to. The scavengers will take everything I’ve built.’</p><p>The anger spikes. So that’s it, then? A bunch of old farm equipment is worth more to him than her safety? He’s going to parcel her off and wash his hands of her like a – no. Breathe. She’s being crazy again. <em> Off her mono-ski, </em> as Ben colourfully put it. His fear is completely reasonable. And the best part is, Rose is an engineer. This, like the vaporators, is a problem she can solve.</p><p>‘Your TIE scout,’ she says. ‘You only took apart one of the laser cannons, right? There’s still a second one untouched.’</p><p>He tilts his head. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’</p><p>‘Well, we can probably use the other to build a more robust perimeter defence than the one we just dismantled. It won’t hold forever, but if you’re not gone longer than a week or two, that should be enough to deter the scavengers. Give me twenty-four hours and I can build it.’</p><p>‘I don’t…’ Ben looks resigned. ‘I don’t have enough water to house five people for twenty-four hours.’</p><p>‘We’ll wait for you in Mos Espa,’ says Rey. She’s the only person present who looks pleased about Rose’s plan. ‘If Rose can hang tight for one more day then there’s no reason why the rest of us need to rush. For better or worse, that Sith temple’s not going anywhere fast.’</p><p>It’s settled. They part ways, and Rose heads straight for the old TIE hangar to get to work. The cloud inside her – the dark part that’s come to think of Ben as <em> hers </em>– glows at the thought of keeping him a little longer. But the other part, the part that’s really her, feels something too. She’s happy. Grounded in the safety of his presence and the satisfying challenge of another engineering task. In the tentative thrill of a relationship that she’s starting to think may outlive the confused, chaotic isolation that gave rise to it.</p><p>For once, both parts of her agree on a priority.</p><p>She’s relaxed as she gets to work on the cannon. The rage cloud hovers white and fluffy overhead, but beneath its cover, for a short while everything feels calm.</p>
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